Immigration and Asylum Bill

Euan Stainbank Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 13th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)]

In Falkirk, discussion of asylum policy has taken unprecedented command of our local debate. What has occurred in our community is an example of the failure of the past Government to provide solutions that work in the best interests of communities across the country, or the best interests of asylum seekers fleeing persecution and conflict, to put it mildly.

The previous Government’s lack of control over the asylum system has almost destroyed public confidence in the system. The number of applicants rose from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands from 2020 onwards, which led to Ministers in a panicked state directing the acquisition of town-centre hotels for use as accommodation. They placed asylum seekers, who are unable to work, as Members have mentioned, into goldfish-bowl hotels across the country. They ground processing to a halt. They forgot about asylum seekers, and forgot, or simply did not care, about communities like Falkirk, which hosted them. We saw costs balloon, and we failed to stop the rise in the number of people coming through illegal routes.

Under this Labour Government, on the other hand, Tory asylum hotels are down by over half since the peak of 400. Crossings came down 41% in one year, and claims came down by 12% in one year. We have also seen the grant rate fall from 45% in July 2024 to 39% today, enabling £1 billion a year to be saved in accommodation costs. Where the previous Government lost control, this Government have taken steps to restore it.

The challenge that the Bill presents us with is finding a way to re-establish public confidence in an asylum system that many of my constituents have told me they are questioning. We cannot let the palpable anger—and there is anger out there, in certain corners of our community—irrevocably push us towards breaking the rights-based order that we have had for 80 years. We must demonstrate that we can control the asylum system without sacrificing our constituents’ rights, as many from opposition parties have suggested.

The tone that the Government have used to communicate our record has caused, I will admit, reasonable concern in my constituency. There are concerns about the measures that we are considering today, and the measures that we have to acknowledge we are not considering today. I do not believe that we can deal with those concerns tonight by abandoning the essential objectives that the Bill seeks to pursue. If we vote against the Bill, we throw away an opportunity for asylum appeals reform. The backlog left by the Conservatives has been rapidly reduced, but many cases have been displaced into the appeals system. We must be quicker, imminently, to resolve appeals. If we vote against the Bill, we are throwing away a chance to build a system of controlled routes, which is the only sustainable solution to boat crossings, but one that requires the public to have confidence in the basic norm of an asylum system, which is being threatened. We also throw away a chance to align with our partners in the Council of Europe on article 8 interpretation, as we did in May in Chi inău, as we seek to resolve an international humanitarian crisis, instead of being pushed to the more extreme solutions that others offer.

There are several areas where we could improve the Bill, and I will bring those up with Ministers in Committee. However, I will not be indulging Conservative Members, who broke my community’s confidence in the asylum system; I will support the Government in making a good faith attempt to resolve it.